Pariah Visit Report

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How is Digital Extremes' keenly anticipated first-person shooter coming along? We get the chance to check it out.

By Richard Aihoshi - 'Jonric'

As we can readily see from the number of titles released year after year, the first-person shooter category is a very active one, attracting the attention and best efforts of many developers. Naturally, the proverbial cream has risen to the top, with a relatively small number of studios holding well-earned positions of leadership and industry-wide respect. One member of this select group is Digital Extremes, founded in 1993 by James Schmalz, who experienced his first success with Epic Pinball, a title that ranks among the most popular shareware releases ever, and its sequel, Extreme Pinball. Together, these two helped fund creation of the Unreal franchise, which is familiar to every action gamer on the planet, with total sales across multiple platforms thought to exceed 10 million units. Naturally, being associated with such a property means high expectations for other projects.

Announced last March, Pariah has been the focus of growing interest ever since. Scheduled to ship in May for the PC and Xbox, with a PS2 version also in the works in conjunction with Pseudo Interactive, the game aims to build on the team's amply demonstrated abilities in areas such as graphics and gameplay by adding a compelling story that interweaves stealth and survival elements with traditional all-out action. Also worth noting are an intriguing system that allows weapons to be customized and upgraded, and a map editor specifically designed to be user-friendly enough for someone using a console controller and computer gamers with little or no technical expertise. I had seen an impressive demo several months ago, but only screenshots and movies since, so when Digital Extremes offered the chance to visit its Toronto office yesterday, I accepted instantly.

First up was a quick tour of the studio. Located near the heart of the city's downtown core, it's home to Pariah and the Brainbox Games division, which makes budget action titles. It opened about three years ago as the company's second facility; the other is a couple of hours down the highway in London ON, with Dark Sector the primary focus. In all likelihood, we'll be seeing and hearing more about the latter in a few months. As can happen when a project is nearing completion, the atmosphere in the office was pretty quiet. At 2pm, some of the work stations were empty, the result of their residents having worked into the wee hours the night before although the team didn't look to be in full crunch mode yet.

Perhaps it never will; when I joined him for a demo, James Schmalz seemed pretty confident about the announced ship date of May 3rd. He showed it on a pair of Xboxes, explaining that the PC version currently has more bugs. The first feature he focused on was the fact weapons may be upgraded. This will involve items called Weapon Energy Cores - abbreviated to WECs and pronounced "weks". These are generic, which means you can use them on any armament you wish. They may also be used to improve the healing tool you carry, which recovers health via injections. The upgrades are pre-set and designed to build upon one another. The example given involved the grenade launcher. The first improvement is a remote detonator, which allows you to choose when the blast occurs. Next is the ability to attract and collect shrapnel from the environment while in flight, which results in more damage. Last is stickiness, which means that if you hit a target, it can't run away from the explosion.

The next point James emphasized is that the gameplay will encompass various types of action. He said the 18 single-player missions will include an unspecified number of vehicular ones. While he didn't disclose any details, he mentioned there's a part where two dropships battle it out. It looks like there will be about five vehicles in all, of which I briefly glimpsed a couple. The Wasp is a light, maneuverable three-wheeled, one-man unit with front-mounted machine guns. The armored bogie carries two, with the driver controlling a coupe of top-mounted cannons and the passenger a rocket launcher. The Xbox will have split-screen cooperative capability. Nothing was said about a similar more for the PC.

Multiplayer will have two types of maps, which James called normal and custom. The former will offer four modes. Individual and team deathmatch are familiar enough, as is capture the flag. There's also a new one called front line assault; unfortunately, I learned nothing about it other than the name. Custom maps are the ones Xbox users will be able to edit. It looked like there are several different ones you can modify by placing objects, changing the terrain geometry, painting it and adjusting such elements as the sky, ambient lighting, weather et al. You can jump into a map while you're working on it to see what it's like, and you can upload maps to a central server via Xbox Live for friends to download even if you're offline.